Paige: The Vampire Slayer
by santaboxers
Summary: Paige, a vampire slayer, moves to Rosewood with her guardians, Tara Maclay and Buffy Summers, for her junior year of high school. There she'll have to balance a social life with slaying as various supernatural forces threaten the town.


**Disclaimer**: Buffy and Co belong to Joss Whedon & Mutant Enemy. PLL belongs to various folks including I. Marlene King and Sara Shepherd. I'm just mashing them all into the same universe for fun.

**Summary**: Paige, a vampire slayer, moves to Rosewood with her guardians, Tara Maclay and Buffy Summers, for her junior year of high school. There she'll have to balance a social life with slaying as various supernatural forces threaten the town.

**Notes**: The Buffy side is canonical until _Tabula Rasa_, then veers off in many ways but still runs _somewhat_ parallel to late season 6 and season 7 as far as overall plot (i.e. Sunnydale is a huge crater, all the former potentials are activated slayers, etc). The Rosewood side is much _less_ canonical – Ali has actually died, there is no A, etc. There are vampires and demons running around town; they don't have time for stalkers sending threatening texts.

0000

_Rosewood, August 2011_

The house was full of boxes. Piles and piles of them, everywhere Paige turned. She should have expected it, between Buffy's shoe and weapon collections as well as Tara's books and magical items, there was simply a whole lot of _stuff_ involved in moving to Rosewood. She sighed. The movers had dumped things in random piles and Buffy had shrugged, more than okay with using slayer-strength to redistribute their belongings to the proper rooms.

Rolling up her metaphorical sleeves, Paige started moving boxes to their places. The downstairs was designated "muggle-friendly" so anything that was obviously related to magic or demons was moved upstairs into the study or downstairs into Tara's ritual space. Having been trained as a slayer since the age of twelve, Paige knew how to properly treat everything from eyeballs in honey to Sobekian Bloodstones, including that particular annoying mummy hand that had snuck onto the bus in Sunnydale and managed to escape destruction numerous times. _That_ for sure wasn't going anywhere near Rosewood's soon to open Magic Box location until they figured out the level of "Sunnydale Syndrome" that Rosewood had. She hated the damn thing though. With Buffy it was almost affectionate, Tara respectful, but it liked to play tricks on her.

Two hours later, the large living area was empty but for the boxes that actually belonged there, waiting to be unpacked. Others were stacked neatly in the kitchen and throughout the rest of the house. Sighing, Paige started on the kitchen. Soon the dishwasher was full of things needing a rinse from the dust of moving, while the large jars of home-grown herbs and hand-ground spices were arranged to Tara's preference. Though Paige could and did cook regularly, the kitchen was undoubtedly her guardian's space. By the time the last small appliance was unpacked and settled into a cabinet, Paige could hear the front door opening.

"Paige? Sweetie?" Tara stepped into the kitchen, a bright smile on her face and smelling strongly of a mix of incense. "Oh thank you, you've done so much!"

Paige dipped her head, blushing slightly. Four years living with Tara and she still wasn't used to compliments or thanks. In her parents' house, chores were a duty and obligation one was simply expected to complete. "We can eat off plates tonight. I mean, we don't have any food really, but we have clean plates and I think I put everything where you'd want."

Tara nodded, "I'll call Buffy and have her pick up dinner on the way home. You and I can go to the grocery store tomorrow." She set her purse down on the island, "It looks like you sorted out all the boxes down here. Have you unpacked your room yet?"

Shaking her head, Paige started to unload the dishwasher. Tara moved to help, and Paige opened all the cabinets for the older woman to inspect. "This looks perfect. Tomorrow, though, I want you to concentrate on your room, okay? There's only a week left before school starts and you should be comfortable and settled before then." She reached out a gentle hand and squeezed Paige's forearm affectionately. "Though I might have to ask you to help with the curtains a little bit. You _are_ the tallest."

Paige grinned. She'd been shorter than even the world's most senior slayer when she'd been taken in by Tara, but had fairly quickly sprouted to her current height that gave her a few inches of advantage over both the women she lived with.

"Now, are you still sure you want to work at the Magic Box after school? You don't have to. You're going to be a junior and your workload is going to pretty intense, on top of training and patrolling," Tara asked as she texted Buffy about dinner. "I'm sure I can hire someone fairly quickly."

"No, I want to help. It'll look good on my college applications and besides, I'm pretty sure my boss will let me study during slow periods," Paige replied.

"Fine, but you can't argue about how much I'm going to pay you, and you _will_ take it young lady. A little extra pocket change is a good thing for a teenager to have," Tara quirked a gentle smile at the young slayer.

That night, over a dinner of Chinese takeout and Buffy's grumbling about the bureaucracy she'd been battling all day as the newest guidance counselor at Rosewood High, Paige tried to relax. But there were butterflies in her stomach. For the past four years, she'd studied and trained and lived at Revello Academy – the New Watcher's Council school in Cleveland that took in and trained slayers. She'd taken the regular college track courses like history, English, and math, but also Latin, basic demonology, and martial arts. She lived with Tara but still visited the dorms fairly frequently to hang out with her friends. Friends who knew who and what she was, were also intimately familiar with the duty and burden she carried. At Rosewood High, she would have no one, and though the rules for slayers now were far different than when Buffy was called, she was still discouraged from telling anyone she didn't know well. Paige was drawn from her thoughts by Buffy speaking to her directly.

"Paige? Have you decided who we are?" she gestured between the three of them.

Paige looked at the elder slayer, confused for a moment before shaking her head, "Yeah, yeah I have." She had thought long and hard about the options Tara had offered for a cover story to explain how a woman only fourteen years her elder could be her guardian. "Tara's my older sister." She knew, with everything else she had to adjust to, she didn't want to start calling Tara and Buffy her aunts, which was the other idea Tara had.

Tara smiled softly, nodding, "We can do that. Will you be okay with your 'sister-in-law' being your guidance counselor?"

Paige shrugged, "I'm not going to make you hide, either of you."

"Well it's not like our marriage is recognized in this state, anyway," Buffy grumbled. Tara set her hand over her wife's, and rubbed soothing circles. "We have all the paperwork ready for whichever situation you decided on, Paige," she continued. "I'll bring you with me to the school on Monday and we'll get you registered for classes. When you're done you can bike over to the shop, okay?"

She nodded, itching to get out and explore Rosewood. So far all she'd seen was the new location for the Magic Box that Tara would manage and the house.

0000

Monday dawned warm and muggy. After a long weekend filled with unpacking and rearranging, the house was finally starting to feel like a home. It was a far different home than the one she'd known for four years, the huge floor of an old factory that had been turned into a living space shared by the surviving Scoobies and the remnants of Angel Investigations that had made it to Cleveland. In comparison, their house in Rosewood was utterly silent.

Breakfast was a groggy affair – Buffy was most certainly not a morning person and Paige only became functional after at least one big cup of coffee. Slayers were by nature more nocturnal than most people. Paige loaded her bicycle onto the rack attached to Buffy's car and belted herself in for the trip to the high school as Tara kissed her spouse goodbye for the day.

Done with various paperwork two hours later, Paige gave Buffy a grin and wave before deciding to wander the school. She'd already memorized the blueprints, but there was always something to be gotten from an in-person reconnaissance. Though school wouldn't start until Thursday, there was a quiet hum to the building from both the teachers that were setting up their rooms and the sports teams that had already started practice. Glancing outside, Paige caught three separate teams in the midst of warm ups on their fields as well as the runners making a long loop around the school grounds. She wandered the halls, slowly learning where everything was from an on-the-ground perspective. The smell of chlorine assaulted her nose when she reached the gym corridor. Paige had love swimming when she was younger, been on the middle school swim team even. There wasn't a pool at the Academy – yet anyways – and she'd missed it. She heard the shrill sharp note of a coach's whistle and the splashes of a team exiting the water. Lingering in the main hall for a few moments, she pushed through the side corridor that held the two locker rooms, the pool's office, and a large storage closet. She could hear the girl's team showering, slamming lockers, and chattering, but it was the pool that drew her in. Until a throat cleared behind her. She spun around, cursing herself for being so entranced by the regulation Olympic pool, complete with stands for a crowd, that she had let her situational awareness drop.

The girl who'd interrupted her, though, was gorgeous even in loose fitting warm ups. Long damp hair framed her face and her eyes sparkled as she smirked gently at Paige, "Hey, are you lost? You're early. Tryouts aren't for another couple weeks."

Paige felt herself blush, and ducked her gaze to the floor, "No, no, I don't have time for the swim team. I was just learning the layout of the school."

"But you're a swimmer?"

"I… I was. In middle school. Now I'm in mixed martial arts and I really don't have the time for two sports." Paige met the girl's eyes again, smiling tentatively. "Can't say I don't miss it, though."

"Well there is free swim on the weekends, if you want to get back in the pool. Welcome to Rosewood. I'm Emily." She offered her hand, grinning.

"Paige, Paige Maclay. It's nice to meet you."

_[to be continued]_


End file.
